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posted by mrpg on Saturday February 09 2019, @04:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-want-one-on-my-cellphone dept.

AMD, Nvidia Have Launched the Least-Appealing GPU Upgrades in History

Yesterday, AMD launched the Radeon VII, the first 7nm GPU. The card is intended to compete with Nvidia's RTX family of Turing-class GPUs, and it does, broadly matching the RTX 2080. It also matches the RTX 2080 on price, at $700. Because this card began life as a professional GPU intended for scientific computing and AI/ML workloads, it's unlikely that we'll see lower-end variants. That section of AMD's product stack will be filled by 7nm Navi, which arrives later this year.

Navi will be AMD's first new 7nm GPU architecture and will offer a chance to hit 'reset' on what has been, to date, the least compelling suite of GPU launches AMD and Nvidia have ever collectively kicked out the door. Nvidia has relentlessly moved its stack pricing higher while holding performance per dollar mostly constant. With the RTX 2060 and GTX 1070 Ti fairly evenly matched across a wide suite of games, the question of whether the RTX 2060 is better priced largely hinges on whether you stick to formal launch pricing for both cards or check historical data for actual price shifts.

Such comparisons are increasingly incidental, given that Pascal GPU prices are rising and cards are getting harder to find, but they aren't meaningless for people who either bought a Pascal GPU already or are willing to consider a used card. If you're an Nvidia fan already sitting on top of a high-end Pascal card, Turing doesn't offer you a great deal of performance improvement.

AMD has not covered itself in glory, either. The Radeon VII is, at least, unreservedly faster than the Vega 64. There's no equivalent last-generation GPU in AMD's stack to match it. But it also duplicates the Vega 64's overall power and noise profile, limiting the overall appeal, and it matches the RTX 2080's bad price. A 1.75x increase in price for a 1.32x increase in 4K performance isn't a great ratio even by the standards of ultra-high-end GPUs, where performance typically comes with a price penalty.

Rumors and leaks have suggested that Nvidia will release a Turing-based GPU called the GTX 1660 Ti (which has also been referred to as "1160"), with a lower price but missing the dedicated ray-tracing cores of the RTX 2000-series. AMD is expected to release "7nm" Navi GPUs sometime during 2019.

Radeon VII launch coverage also at AnandTech, Tom's Hardware.

Related: AMD Returns to the Datacenter, Set to Launch "7nm" Radeon Instinct GPUs for Machine Learning in 2018
Nvidia Announces RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070 GPUs, Claims 25x Increase in Ray-Tracing Performance
AMD Announces "7nm" Vega GPUs for the Enterprise Market
Nvidia Announces RTX 2060 GPU
AMD Announces Radeon VII GPU, Teases Third-Generation Ryzen CPU
AMD Responds to Radeon VII Short Supply Rumors


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by black6host on Saturday February 09 2019, @05:34AM (2 children)

    by black6host (3827) on Saturday February 09 2019, @05:34AM (#798719) Journal

    I've been chasing the video card manufacturers since the days of Hercules cards. Nowadays, I'm way behind the curve. A lowly GTX 960. And, it plays everything I want so fuck all that spending! I'll let the rich folks pay the crazy prices and wait for, as always happens, the tides to turn.

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  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday February 09 2019, @06:54PM (1 child)

    by richtopia (3160) on Saturday February 09 2019, @06:54PM (#798890) Homepage Journal

    I am surprised that the GPU manufacturers aren't pursuing the budget market more. Both companies have new GPU architectures and access to new manufacturing lines, so why are there no sub $200 cards younger than two years old? AMD has demonstrated Vega can in APU configurations with less than 56 compute units, but there are no dedicated GPU solutions fitting that market segment.